Tuesday, October 04, 2011

First Thornton Excelsior Medley

Occasionally one of my characters asserts their individuality and proceeds to do more than I originally intended for them. In short, they exceed their mandate. Robin Darktree, for example, was only supposed to appear in a single short-story back in 1994; somehow he ended up playing the main role in two novellas, The Darktree Wheel and Eyelidiad, and has become the hero of my (long promised but still unfinished) big novel, The Clown of the New Eternities. How did he do that? I'm not entirely sure...

Thornton Excelsior is another character who has decided to declare independence from my strictures and go his own way, compelling me to follow him down paths I might never have explored on my own. He first appeared in 'An Inconvenient Fruit' late last year, fatally flooding the world by biting into the juiciest peach that could ever exist, and now he's everywhere in my fiction. Keeping a stern eye on his activities won't curtail his exploits; he exists in many dimensions and timeframes simultaneously. I might as well just give in and allow him to set the pace... Accordingly I have collected eight of his tales into a single novelette which is now available to be downloaded and read for free, courtesy of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #38.